Friday, August 31, 2007

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Here's a strange crime with a local connection... This isn't surprising though. In my experience things like security systems that use any sort of IP network are usually extremely unsecured. Passwords are generally "password", there's no firewall or encryption and worst of all, they run on Windows! Ya right, real secure, sure...

"The FBI is investigating fifteen store robberies in eleven states, committed via phone and internet. The perpetrators hack the store's security system so they can observe their victims. They then make customers take their clothes off and get the store to wire money. "

"What that means is that people throughout Southern California will no longer be able to call 853-1212 to hear a woman's recorded voice state that "at the tone, Pacific Daylight Time will be . . ." with the recording automatically updating at 10-second intervals.

""Times change," said John Britton, an AT&T spokesman. "In today's world, there are just too many other ways to get this information. You can look at your cellphone or your computer. You no longer have to pick up the telephone."

"Indeed, time already has stopped in 48 other states, he said. California and Nevada are the two remaining holdouts."

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Sybase ASE servers are case sensitive by default. This is a server-wide setting driven by the default character set and the sort order. Changing this impacts both object names and data itself so if you have to do this, expect unexpected consequences.

There is no way to change case sensitivity on a per-connection basis, or on a per-database basis. Changing it on an existing server is difficult and involves a lot more steps. But I recently had to make this change on a new install, having no databases and no data. It's much easier in that case.

To make a new Sybase ASE server install non-case sensitive (using it's default English character set), on Linux:

1. After the install, as the Sybase user with the usual permissions, run this (if you just installed the server, then the sa password is empty, specify the -P with no text after):

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

I just finished an install of the 64-bit Sybase ASE server on Fedora 6. I had to do a few things to get this to work that others might run into.

0. For some reason the Sybase setup utility refuses to run regardless of X11 security. I ran "setup -console" for a text version of the install (why everyone seems to think everything has to be GUI is beyond me anyway).

1. Sybase (64-bit) requires a libaio package that wasn't installed by my Fedora install. It would tell me that libaio.so.1 can't be loaded when trying to start the server. I managed to get this library using the Fedora add/update software GUI tool. This tool is a pain. The best bet is to use "list" and just find it. The package providing this library has an obvious name.

2. The server still won't start. A look at my server log in the Sybase software target directory, and down in "install", said it was unable to allocate the needed amount of shared memory. To correct this, I added this line:

kernel.shmmax=2147483648

to the file /etc/sysctl.conf and then ran the command "/sbin/sysctl -p". Then I went over to the Sybase install directories and started the server as I normally would. It worked.

3. The Sybase environment variables are setup in the install directory in some sample scripts. On my machine, that's /opt/sybase/SYBASE.sh for example.

A note about the Fedora software update program - it is truly shockingly awful. For one thing you can not use it if you are not connected to the internet. It will not install software from CDs or a DVD without some modification for which no help is provided (do some searches on Google to get some tips if you have to do this).

Also, Sybase does require a few other packages. But if you installed Fedora with various development options, you'll get them. It also needs a Java install.

It is said that the 32-bit version on ASE can run on a 64-bit Fedora install too, but to do that you must collect up some 32-bit libraries by, get this, installing the 32-bit version of Fedora someplace and copying off the needed files. Here's a tip on this:

I am not at all impressed with Fedora. I would not recommend it. Its "out of the box" configuration is all but unusable, and it is deeply flawed with regard to hardware identification, particularly for graphics systems. There's no excuse. Other distributions are vastly superior in this area.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

"Players want standardized data about Eve's economy to help them track prices and make investment decisions as they battle to control interstellar space on behalf of mega-corporations whose size and power would make any real multinational blush."

You are have a big personality. It's hard for anyone to ignore you!You dream big. You think big. And you eat big.Some people consider you high maintenance, but you just know what you want... and when you want it.

still do not all come up correctly in search results (some do). What's more, the pages that I moved under that URL, still come up in the search results in their old locations, and so are now bad links. That's what I really don't like about this, and the real downside about moving things around. It did need to be done though before I add additional "Elgin Watch Word" material.

It's strange that some of the material comes up correctly in search results and some does not. Updates to the Google index appearently don't happen all at once.

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, whose programs were once among the most viewed on YouTube, were requested by the video site to give testimony in legal proceedings as it fights a $1 billion lawsuit by Viacom Inc, according to court filings."

Monday, August 13, 2007

About three weeks ago I moved some web pages and set up a new more centralized page, pointing to various new things under a single directory. As a result some links returned in Google search no longer exist.

Today is August 13th. Google has not indexed my pages since July 8th. This is in spite of there existing at least four regularly updated blogs containing references to my pages, posts in USENET news groups, my having brand new pages on the past two Googlebot scans, and my entering the new page here:

I realize Googlebot has a lot on its plate, but it's very frustrating watching days go by and knowing that links to no place are turning up as high as the first and second pages of search results. I light of how I know it would be abused if Google offered some way to request a rescan more directly, there's nothing to do but wait.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Thursday, August 02, 2007

I just replaced my phone with one of the most popular phones around; the
Motorola 3xx. My old phone was an obscure NEC model that I've had for at
least two years. I bought the NEC because of it's advanced features at
the time. It was rough around the edges, not well documented, and hard to
set up, but it was an early phone to include a usable camera, a java VM,
and internet capabilities like web browsing and real SMTP email via POP.

Pro:

* It's nice and loud and clear. It's easy to hear, and other hear me well
when I use it.

* It uses G3 networks and gets great reception everywhere I need it to, so
far.

* The display is remarkably bright and sharp.

* Sending an SMS email from the phone is remarkably fast compared to my
old phone. I assume this is because of the G3 network.

* Speaker mode. My old phone didn't have that and I frequently wished it
did.

* 1.3 mp camera.

* The new phone has a mini USB port and will charge itself from any USB
connection.

* An SD card installed in the phone can be used as general removable media
via USB. This can used to move MP3 files, phones and other files to and
from the phone.

* Google's java applications work fine. I can access gmail for example
even though the phone doesn't offer that built in.

* The voice dialing interface on this phone is interesting. You don't
have to pre-record yourself saying a voice command. It actually dialed a
person that I had in the phone book simply by "reading" their name. I only
tried this a couple of times, and I had to say the name 3 or 4 times, but
it worked.

Cons

* The menu system is a mixed bag when compared to my old phone. For
example, one of the things I didn't like about the old one is that is that
it took too many key clicks to change the ring mode. On the Motorola,
that's much easier. On the the other hand, on the Motorola, it takes too
many clicks to activate the camera. On the old one it took just button.

* This new phone can not act as a POP client. It's locked down to
read email only from AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft and a couple others, none of
which do I use. With the old phone I could access any email system via
a plain old POP server.

* The much hyped media capabilities of the phone are no so great (shocking
I know). Crippled, as usual, the device and service channel the user into
a restricted set of locked down providers, like AT&T Music Service (ya,
I'll get right on that...). The phone will play general MP3 files
however, if one buys an extra SD card for the phone.

* MP3 files have to be less then 128 bit sampled.

* There's no audio jack on the phone. To play an MP3 file, you need some
Blue Tooth enabled headphones.

* The camera takes remarkably color-poor photos. It's become increasing
obvious that phone cameras skimp on things, like the lens, in order to
increase the mega-pixel number, at a fixed cost.

* Minor point - the camera lens is at the bottom (hinge end) for the phone
lid. There's a tendency to cover the lens with one's fingers while taking
a photo.